The kids in recess were laughing.

Fabián Cadamuro, a teacher at a school in the Córdoba town of Cañada de Luque (population of 1,100), watched a group of children surrounding a 14-year-old boy holding a cellphone. He was using a casino app and his father’s Mercado Pago account to take bets from his classmates. A schoolyard bookie.

“It really caught our attention. The parents of 90% of the kids are rural employees. In many cases, they are illiterate,” he said. Like many teachers across the country, he was concerned that the playground distraction could lead to a gambling addiction.

The numbers, though scarce, are not promising. A study by the Buenos Aires City Ombudsman’s Office found last week that one in four high school students in the Argentine capital made bets on online platforms at least once. The survey, answered by 2,800 children and teenagers from 25 schools, found that 8.8% of high schoolers betted frequently.

The report was published as Argentina is going through a burgeoning youth gambling crisis. Although nearly 30 bills dealing with online betting have been filed by parties across the political spectrum, and some provincial governments have implemented their own campaigns and restrictions, no nationwide regulation has been passed in Congress.

Online betting platforms arrived in Argentina in 2017, but went mainstream only recently. Buenos Aires province gave Swedish gambling giant Betsson its license to operate in 2021, thanks to a partnership with the Entre Ríos company Casino de Victoria. Córdoba province followed suit, granting the company its license in 2023. Theoretically, no betting platform allows minors to gamble on them, but children and teenagers find ways of circumventing the restrictions.

A flurry of illegal apps and informal betting houses organized through messaging apps are also operating in the country. The report found that 39% of students do not know whether the platforms on which they gamble are legal or not. Among those who do know, 60% use official platforms, while 40% bet on illegal sites.

According to the survey, virtual casinos are the most popular platforms, with half of the Buenos Aires City students who bet saying they prefer them. They are followed by sports betting, with 32% of high-school users.

The report also found that 13% of regular users of these apps find it “very” or “quite” difficult to stop betting, indicating that they could be suffering from a compulsive gambling problem. “This group, which presents difficulties in controlling their gambling behavior, represents 3% of the total sample,” the report said.

“The phenomenon is clearly socially transversal,” Pablo Gordon Daluz, director of the Ombudsman’s Office Rights Monitor, said during the presentation of the report, adding that kids from private and public schools and different areas of the city have similar behaviors. “The only thing we did notice is that, as the educational level of the families increased, the level of gambling decreased,” said Gordon Daluz.

Although most anti-gambling initiatives are directed at schools, less than 10% of students bet while in the classroom. Half do so from their homes. In May, Buenos Aires Mayor Jorge Macri blocked all gambling sites from city public schools’ internet networks.

Today, most national football teams are sponsored by online betting platforms, and players wear their logos on their shirts. Dozens of social media influencers advertise the apps. In October, after the Buenos Aires City government filed a complaint, a court indicted 16 Argentine celebrities, including singer L-Gante and actress Florencia Peña, on accusations they had endorsed illegal online betting platforms on social media.

However, when asked how they found out about online gambling platforms, 73% of the surveyed students said they heard about them through friends, family, or acquaintances. Only 26% found out about them through influencers or adverts.

According to the survey, 90% of respondents used e-wallets to place their bets. Mercado Pago, the country’s leading e-wallet, told the Herald it does not allow minors to participate in online gambling and betting. “Through automatic filters, we reject payments and transfers made by minors to gambling platforms,” said a representative of the company.

The survey found that adults or minors with access to adults’ e-wallet accounts work as “bookies” or “brokers” for children and teenagers eager to bet, taking their money to place their bets and earning commissions to do so.

“There is also peer-to-peer lending: we’re seeing a cultural setback in which they even charge inflation-based interests,” said Buenos Aires City ombudswoman, María Rosa Muiños.

The Ombudsman’s Office also held a meeting with representatives of the Central Bank, asking them to identify and block the “brokers,” but received no clear response. “In theory, they will see a person playing on 10 or 15 platforms at the same time with the same name,” said Muiños. “It should be fairly easy to identify.”

The study also found that 67% of young gamblers did so as a “quick and easy way to earn income,” while only 25% did it for fun.

“The monetization of adolescence is, logically, very tied to regulations: less than a month ago, the national government made it legal for children to invest in the capital market from the age of 13,” Muiños said during the presentation of the report. “The idea of easy money comes in a context of deep inflation in a generalized economic crisis — teenagers want to put their money to ‘work,’ too,” she said

“We are seeing teenagers with adult problems.”